The Anglo-Irish Treaty provided that in the future Ireland should have the

same constitutional status in the community of Nations known as the British Empire as the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the Dominion of New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa with a parliament having powers to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland and an Executive responsible to that parliament.

The new dominion was to be known as the Irish Free State. This peace agreement, ratified by the British Parliament, became operative when it also was passed (January 1922) by a meeting of the Dáil. The new state comprised only 26 of the island’s 32 counties; the northeastern area, known as Northern Ireland, remained part of the United Kingdom.

The terms of the treaty had been accepted by the Irish signatories only because Lloyd George had threatened war on Ireland if they were rejected. A prescribed oath of allegiance to the British crown and the provisions allowing Northern Ireland to remain outside the new state were considered particularly obnoxious by many Irish. De Valera and other republicans immediately repudiated the treaty, and, after its passage in the Dáil, de Valera resigned the presidency. Collins, chairman of the provisional government set up according to the terms of the treaty, and Griffith, the new president of the Dáil, desired an immediate general election to obtain a verdict on the treaty; in the deteriorating conditions Collins and de Valera eventually made an agreement known as the Pact (May 20, 1922), in which it was settled that government (pro-treaty) and republican candidates would not oppose each other and that de Valera would work within the electoral arrangement. But the Pact naturally could not bind other parties, and in the election on June 16 republicans were ousted in favour of members of a labour party and a farmers’ party and by independents, thus reducing the anti-treaty vote to a small minority.

Before the Dáil could meet, civil war had broken out between the government and the extremist republicans, who were allegedly accessories to the assassination in London on June 22, 1922, of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson soon after his acceptance of the position of military adviser to the government of Northern Ireland. That spring the republicans in Dublin had occupied the Four Courts (central courts of justice). In late June, under pressure from Britain, which also provided military equipment, Collins ordered the republicans to retire. When they refused, Free State forces opened fire on the Courts. Serious fighting ensued for a week, until the Courts were nearly destroyed by shelling, and Rory O’Connor, the Dublin republican leader, surrendered. Meanwhile, de Valera, who had escaped to the southwest, was openly supporting the republicans. Griffith and Collins decided that no further compromise was possible, and military operations were begun. The strain had weighed so heavily on Griffith that he died suddenly on August 12, and Collins, inspecting the military operations, was killed in an ambush in County Cork on August 22.

The government thus lost its two most prominent leaders, and surviving ministers could not appear openly without armed protection. Moreover, there was urgency in that, by the terms of the treaty, the newly elected Dáil was required to frame its constitution before December 6, 1922. It met on September 9, elected as the new president William Thomas Cosgrave, and, in the absence of the republican deputies, quickly passed the clauses of the constitution defining the relations of the Irish Free State with the British crown and outlining arrangements for imperial defense. Timothy Michael Healy, a veteran follower of Parnell who had later supported Sinn Féin, was then appointed governor-general, and Cosgrave became president of the executive council. The new constitution was also ratified by the British Parliament.

The Cosgrave ministries

Both before and after the ratification of the constitution, the government resorted to strong measures to quell disorder and violence. Its decision to execute those found in unauthorized possession of firearms embittered Irish politics for years afterward. Numerous republican insurgents were also imprisoned, and 77 were executed, including the republican leaders who had surrendered in the Four Courts. Although republican opposition was at first more bitter than ever, it was less organized and did not enjoy the support of most people; by May 1923, on de Valera’s recommendation, armed resistance to the Irish Free State ended.

At the end of August 1923 the fourth Dáil was elected, on a basis of adult suffrage for men and women. De Valera retained his personal following, and his party won more than one-third of the seats in the Dáil. Cosgrave’s party won less than half the total number of seats, but, as the republicans refused to sit in the new Dáil, he had a majority among those who did attend. The absence of any effective opposition party greatly strengthened the power of the new government, and in the following years it displayed great energy. Despite initial economic difficulties, it pursued an efficient farming policy and carried through important hydroelectric projects. Government was increasingly centralized, with the elimination of various corrupt borough corporations; Kevin O’Higgins, as minister for justice, carried through many judicial reforms, and an efficient civil service was organized.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 had provided that, if Northern Ireland did not enter the Irish Free State, a boundary commission must establish the frontier between the two countries. Two of the six excluded counties, Tyrone and Fermanagh, contained clear, though small, nationalist majorities, and the southern portions of both Down and Armagh had for years elected nationalist members. Despite Northern Ireland’s reluctance, the Boundary Commission was established and sat in secret session during 1925. But it recommended only minor changes, which all three governments rejected as less satisfactory than maintaining the status quo.

In the general election of June 1927, Cosgrave’s support in the Dáil was further reduced, but he nevertheless formed a new ministry, in which O’Higgins became vice president of the Executive Council. O’Higgins’s assassination by republicans on July 10 suddenly revived old feuds, and Cosgrave passed a Public Safety Act, declaring all revolutionary societies treasonable. He forced the republicans to acknowledge allegiance to the crown before being seated in the Dáil, though de Valera decried the oath as an “empty political formula.” Shortly thereafter the new republican party, Fianna Fáil, led by de Valera, albeit reluctantly accepting the legitimacy of the Irish Free State, and allied with the Labour Party and the National League, almost defeated Cosgrave, who thereupon dissolved the Dáil. In new elections, Cosgrave won 61 of the Dáil’s 128 seats as compared with Fianna Fáil’s 57 and again formed a ministry. In the economic depression of the early 1930s, unemployment and general discontent with the government led to its defeat in February 1932. Fianna Fáil won enough seats for de Valera, with Labour Party support, to be able to form a new government.

De Valera’s governments (1932–48) and the establishment of Éire

De Valera entered office with a policy of encouraging industry and improving the social services. He abolished the oath of allegiance to the crown and also stopped payment to Britain of interest on the capital advanced under the Land Acts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This refusal led to a tariff war with Britain. The country endorsed his policies in January 1933 by returning him to the Dáil with 77 seats and the support of the Labour Party.

De Valera invoked the Public Safety Act against the Blueshirts, a quasi-fascist body organized (by Cosgrave’s militant supporters) allegedly to protect treatyites from republican extremists at public meetings. The government’s relations with the republicans who still refused to recognize the Irish Free State also deteriorated, and many were arrested and imprisoned in the mid-1930s.

De Valera introduced proposals for a new constitution in 1937. The power of the crown was ended, and the office of governor-general was replaced by that of a president elected by national suffrage. The first president was Douglas Hyde, a Celtic scholar who had been associated with the Gaelic revival since 1890. The new constitution did not proclaim an independent republic, but it replaced the title of the Irish Free State with the word Éire (Ireland). The new constitution was ratified by a plebiscite in the 1937 general election (in which de Valera was again victorious) and became operative on December 29, 1937. An agreement in April 1938 ended British occupation of three naval bases that had been left in British hands by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The dispute over the land-purchase annuities was settled, and the tariff warfare abated.

At the outbreak of World War II, de Valera renewed his statement, made in 1938, that Ireland would not become a base for attacks on Great Britain. Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1939, hundreds of IRA members were interned without trial, and six were executed between 1940 and 1944. His government, reelected in 1943 and 1944, remained strictly neutral, despite German air raids on Dublin in 1941 and, after the United States entered the war in December 1941, pressure from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The republic of Ireland

In the general election of 1948, Fianna Fáil won 68 of the 147 seats in the Dáil, but de Valera refused to enter a coalition. John A. Costello emerged as the leader of a bloc composed of his own party, Fine Gael, and several smaller groups. Out of office, de Valera toured the world advocating the unification and independence of Ireland. Fearful of de Valera’s prestige, Costello introduced in the Dáil the Republic of Ireland Act, which ended the fiction of Commonwealth membership that had been maintained since 1937. The act took effect in April 1949. Britain recognized the new status of Ireland but declared that unity with the six counties of Northern Ireland could not occur without consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland. Economic difficulties and a controversy between the minister for health and the Roman Catholic hierarchy over the Public Health Act weakened Costello’s government, and, after the general election of 1951, de Valera again became prime minister. His ministry aroused sufficient discontent for Costello to be returned to power in 1954; however, economic troubles enabled Fianna Fáil to win a majority in 1957. This was to be de Valera’s last administration. He retired as prime minister in 1959 but was elected to the presidency, serving until 1973.

Developments since 1959

Economic and political developments

Sean Lemass, prime minister from 1959 to 1966, initiated measures to stimulate Ireland’s seriously stagnating economy. Under the First Programme for Economic Expansion (1958–63), economic protection was dismantled and foreign investment encouraged; a growth rate that was planned to reach 2 percent actually reached 4 percent. This prosperity brought profound social and cultural changes to what had been one of the poorest countries in Europe. Emigration substantially declined, consumer spending increased, and religious social teaching was challenged.

Ireland, like Britain, suffered setbacks in attempting to join the European Economic Community (EEC), but both countries formally entered that organization on January 1, 1973. In elections held later that year, the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch (prime minister from 1966) was defeated by a Fine Gael–Labour coalition led by Liam Cosgrave. The worldwide oil crisis and recession of 1974–75 forced the imposition of deflationary economic policies, a wealth tax, and attempts to tax farmers’ incomes. Lynch returned to power in 1977, and Fianna Fáil proposed an ambitious economic policy based on tax cuts and the creation of new enterprises through foreign borrowing. Despite a brief boom, serious economic problems became evident by 1980. These included declining agricultural prices, rising prices for imported oil, only a small increase in output, and a rapidly growing population, nearly half of which was under age 25. Moreover, foreign borrowing increased, and unemployment and inflation rose steeply. Civil strife in Northern Ireland, culminating in the revival of the IRA there, provided an uneasy backdrop.

The early 1980s were politically volatile. Although no clear majority emerged in the election of 1981, Garret FitzGerald of the Fine Gael–Labour coalition took power, ousting Charles Haughey, who had succeeded Lynch as Fianna Fáil prime minister in 1979. The major issues of the campaign were economic policy, including the imposition of a wealth tax, and the removal of a constitutional ban on divorce. The budget of the coalition government was defeated in January 1982, and a general election in February returned Fianna Fáil and Haughey to power. The new government’s tenure was short and uneasy. In the face of a large budget deficit, a program of severe public spending cuts was introduced. The government was defeated on a no-confidence vote in November, and another general election—the third in 18 months—followed. This time a Fine Gael–Labour coalition under the leadership of FitzGerald secured an overall governing majority.

By the mid-1980s the economy showed signs of improvement. Inflation was at its lowest level in nearly two decades, helped by lower oil prices. However, the budget deficit and high unemployment continued to pose considerable problems. Emigration, a barometer of Irish economic health, again began to increase in the mid-1980s. The prolonged recession had once again brought to the surface doubts and anxieties about the future of the Irish state and its real independence.

In February 1987 Fianna Fáil returned to power under Haughey but without an overall majority. The new Progressive Democrat Party, formed in 1985 by former supporters of Fianna Fáil, made a strong showing. Following a decision in November 1986 to drop its abstentious policy and contest future Dáil elections, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA (so called because it split from the old IRA over the use of force in Northern Ireland), stood on a socialist and pro-IRA platform but failed to win a seat. Shortly after the election, the former prime minister Garret FitzGerald resigned as leader of Fine Gael and was succeeded by Alan Dukes.

The new government embarked on a program of comprehensive public spending cuts, which secured the support of Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats, though the Labour Party, traditionally committed to high public expenditure programs, was more critical. The austerity measures were successful, and by the early 1990s the country’s economic position had improved considerably. Inflation was low, budget deficits were reduced, and the annual growth rate was averaging more than 5 percent. The economy continued to boom throughout the late 1990s, fueled by the high-technology sector, with unemployment dropping to historically low levels.

In 1990 Mary Robinson was elected the republic’s first woman president. The election of a candidate with socialist and feminist sympathies was regarded as a watershed in Irish political life, reflecting the changes taking place in Irish society. Haughey was replaced in 1992 as leader of Fianna Fáil by Albert Reynolds, who also became prime minister. A Fianna Fáil–Labour coalition came to power after the 1992 general election but collapsed two years later. Another coalition, consisting of members of the Fine Gael, Labour, and Democratic Left parties, then took office, with Fine Gael leader John Bruton as prime minister. The Bruton government lasted until the general election of June 1997, after which Fianna Fáil formed a new coalition with party leader Bertie Ahern as prime minister. In October Mary McAleese was elected president, the first Irish president from Northern Ireland (she was reelected in 2004). In 2002 Fianna Fáil narrowly failed to gain an outright majority in the Dáil, and it formed another coalition government with the Progressive Democrats, headed again by Ahern. Although dogged by criticism through much of his tenure, Ahern capitalized on his personal popularity to lead Fianna Fáil to another election victory in 2007, and he began a new term as prime minister of yet another coalition government. In May 2008, however, in response to growing criticism of alleged past financial improprieties, Ahern resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Brian Cowen.

In May 1987 a constitutional referendum ratified the Single European Act and served to confirm Ireland’s participation in the EEC (and later the European Community [EC] and European Union [EU]). The act called for the harmonization of social and fiscal measures taken within the EEC and was a forerunner of the 1991 Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty), which paved the way for the establishment of economic and monetary union. Irish voters approved the Maastricht Treaty by a large majority in a referendum held in 1992. In 1999 Ireland became a charter member of the euro, the EU’s single currency. On January 1, 2002, Ireland, along with 11 other EU countries, replaced its banknotes and coins with the EU currency. The robust Irish economy wavered early in the new millennium but soon returned to steady growth, though not on the scale of the booming 1990s. In 2008 Ireland became an obstacle to the passage of the Lisbon Treaty—an agreement aimed at streamlining the EU’s processes and giving it a higher international profile—when a referendum on the treaty was voted down by the Irish electorate in June. However, on Oct. 2, 2009, a second referendum met with great support, and Ireland became the 25th of the EU’s 27 member countries to ratify the Lisbon Treaty.

Social changes

The close relationship between the Irish republic and the Roman Catholic church was highlighted by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland in 1979, the first visit there of a reigning pontiff. The relationship was tested in the 1980s and ’90s, however, as attempts were made to alter Irish law in relation to Roman Catholic doctrine. The clause in the 1937 constitution acknowledging the special position of the Catholic church was removed, and in 1983 the efforts of Catholic pressure groups resulted in a referendum on a draft constitutional amendment reinforcing the republic’s existing ban on abortion. After a divisive campaign, with barely a majority of the electorate voting in the referendum, voters approved the amendment.

In 1985 the Roman Catholic church strenuously, but futilely, opposed the government’s liberalization of legislation concerning contraception. Church-state relations were tested again the following year when a referendum to remove the constitutional ban against divorce was defeated. A second referendum on abortion, which strengthened the existing antiabortion law but enabled women to travel overseas to obtain an abortion, was approved in 1992. Another referendum to lift the ban on divorce was held in 1995; passing by only a small majority, it went into effect in 1997. At the end of the 1990s the Roman Catholic church in Ireland was rocked by a series of scandals, which did much to damage its reputation. In 2002, in Ireland’s fifth abortion referendum in less than 20 years, voters narrowly rejected Prime Minister Ahern’s attempt to disallow pregnant women claiming to be suicidal from traveling overseas to obtain an abortion. Underscoring the country’s urban-rural division, Cork, Limerick, and all electoral districts in Dublin opposed closing the loophole, while a majority of voters in other areas of the country favoured Ahern’s measure.

Relations with Northern Ireland

During the late 1950s and early ’60s the Irish government was forced to deal with IRA attacks on British army posts along the Ulster border. An attempt to ease cross-border tensions was made in 1965, when Lemass, then Ireland’s prime minister, and Terence O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s prime minister, exchanged visits. In 1970 Prime Minister Lynch dismissed two of Ireland’s cabinet ministers following an attempt to import arms for use in Northern Ireland.

The Irish government was increasingly preoccupied by the situation in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In 1973 Prime Minister Cosgrave participated in talks with Edward Heath, prime minister of Britain, and representatives of Northern Ireland, resulting in the Sunningdale Agreement. This accord recognized that the north’s relationship with Britain could not be changed without the agreement of a majority of the population in Northern Ireland, and it provided for the establishment of a Council of Ireland composed of members from both the Dáil and the Northern Ireland assembly. The agreement collapsed the following year.

Although the republic was little affected by the violence in Ulster, there were a number of serious terrorist incidents. The murder of the British ambassador in Dublin in 1976 led to a state of emergency and the unpopular measure of strengthening emergency-powers legislation; and the assassination of Earl Louis Mountbatten of Burma (Britain’s last viceroy in India) by the IRA three years later further intensified opposition to terrorism.

In 1981 Prime Minister FitzGerald launched a constitutional crusade to make the reunification of Ireland more attractive to Northern Ireland’s Protestants. At the end of the year, the Irish and British governments set up an Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council to discuss matters of common concern, especially security. In 1984 the report of the New Ireland Forum—a discussion group that included representatives of the political parties in Ireland and Northern Ireland—set out three possible frameworks for political development in Ireland: those of a unitary state, a federal state, and joint sovereignty. Fianna Fáil preferred a unitary state, while Fine Gael and Labour preferred the federal solution. In November 1985 at Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Britain again agreed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, and an intergovernmental conference was established to deal with political, security, and legal relations between the two parts of the island.

Despite Fianna Fáil’s initial criticism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Haughey government maintained support for the agreement while it was in power. Contacts between the Irish and British governments continued after February 1987 within the formal structure of the intergovernmental conference. Fears that the violence in Northern Ireland would spill into Ireland as a consequence of closer Anglo-Irish cooperation in the wake of the agreement proved unfounded.

In 1993 the Irish and British governments signed a joint peace initiative (the Downing Street Declaration), in which they pledged to seek mutually agreeable political structures in Northern Ireland and between the two islands. The following year the IRA declared a cease-fire, and for the next 18 months there was considerable optimism that a new period of political cooperation between north and south had been inaugurated. The cease-fire collapsed in 1996, however, and the IRA resumed its bombing campaign.

In 1998 Prime Minister Ahern played an important role in brokering the Belfast Agreement (also known as the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), which would create a Northern Ireland Assembly, establish north-south political structures, and amend Ireland’s 1937 constitution by removing from it the claim to Northern Ireland. On May 22, 1998, the agreement was approved by 94 percent of voters in Ireland and by 71 percent in Northern Ireland. With the establishment of the power-sharing assembly, the Irish government continued to remain active in promoting peace and economic development in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly’s assumption of power was halting, however, and was suspended intermittently, largely in response to the failure of the paramilitary forces to fully decommission and disarm. But in May 2007, following another round of new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and two years after the IRA’s renouncement of armed struggle, power sharing became a reality in Northern Ireland.

Leaders of Ireland since 1922

The table provides a chronological list of the leaders of Ireland since 1922.